#The ladainha is my mestre's rendition of 'Eu já vivo enjoado'

[overdrivels]

Capoeira vem, capoeira vai

Satya, on multiple occasions, has warned him—scolded, more like—about the improper use of Vishkar technology. Lúcio always brushes her off, convinced she says that because she has too much pride in Vishkar’s work, and not because she can see what the Sound Amplifier really does to him. Not that he would ever admit it to her or anyone else.

Not even if the image of his fractured arm on the holoscreen stares him in the face.

“C’mon Mercy, s’no big deal,” Lúcio laughs through clenched teeth even though it only intensifies the pain addling his mind. He doesn’t see Mercy frowning, too busy trying to focus on staying upright on his seat.

“No big dea—” Mercy takes a breath, incredulous. “Most blood vessels in your arms has exploded, your shoulder is dislocated, and your arm’s bones are broken.”

“S’not broken. Jus’ fractured.”

“Fractured is broken.”

He nods weakly, eyes squeezed shut because he really can’t get his brain to work out the semantics of medical correctness, and because he really wants to throw up. He holds the edge of his chair, and tries hard not to focus on the fact that the room feels like it’s doing the samba.

“Mercy. ‘m sorry, bu’could you jus’give me a break? I don’feel so hot.”

There is a moment of terse silence and for a moment, Lúcio thought his self-control would run out and he’d be face-first in a pool of his own vomit. Then he swears he hears Mercy sigh before the familiar feeling of warmth fills his entire being, the sickening feeling and pain finally ebbing away. His fingers slacken--"Nein, nein!!"--and he does end up face-first on the floor, too exhausted from the mission and the fight to stay dignified on his chair.

He isn’t quite sure when he passed out—if he passed out. The feeling of being lifted, the sight of dark fur, and hearing lots of garbled noise sticks out—but when he is finally able to string a coherent thought together (‘Yeah, fractured bones are totally broken bones.’), he finds himself alone in a bed with his right arm bandaged from fingers to shoulder in a sling.

'That's overkill,' he thinks hazily to himself.

 An experimental flex of his finger yields unspectacular results. The digits can twitch, but not much else. The pain is surprisingly absent, and Lúcio thinks it must be because of Mercy. She never did like seeing people suffering. Alive, but certainly not suffering, if the arguments she has with Ana are any indication.

He takes a lazy inventory of his surroundings. Bare, with simple furnishings, hardly anything excess. A table by his side with his tablet on it. A lamp. No window. A chair with an empty jar, the red lid and peanut logo oddly familiar.

The implications finally click in his mind, his stomach clenches and the nausea returns, and he has to take deep breaths to fight the wild urge to run after the several hundred pound gorilla. No doubt Mercy has already informed Winston in explicit detail on his condition and the effects of the Sound Amplifier while he was unconscious. The tell-tale absence of his glorified megaphone is enough to confirm that.

Instinctively, his hand jerkily forms the sign of a cross across his front. He prays that the specifics never reaches Satya’s ears. She would probably gloat that she was right, that Vishkar’s technology was not meant to be in the hands of a ruffian like himself. He knows the condescendence was not intentional, but it burns to hear it and even more so to know that it could be true.

It is a dirty secret; the Sound Amplifier is incomplete (not just the blueprints, but too few resources and backyard creativity probably didn’t help). The feedback from using ‘Sound Barrier’ has been slowly tearing his body apart, it was destroying him just a touch more than it heals him. After every mission, his shoulder is left sore and his teeth tingling from the vibrations that gets his nerves more hopped up than his fans after one of his world tours. But, he wears his smile because that's what he has to do.

And no one was supposed to find out.

Lúcio immediately reaches for his tablet and thumbs through it, searching for tunes that could squelch the jitters that found a home in his stomach. There is little use dwelling on it now. If the architect wasn't at the foot of his bed with a list of improvements (or complaints), then he'll count that as a blessing, and stay put in recovery. But however much he trusts Mercy to keep her professionalism about her, the anxiety still drives him to select a hidden playlist that he needs a password for. The songs are all listed as “Untitled”, but he does not need to know the names, having heard them so many times in his moments of despair and loneliness.

A few quick taps, and the first sound of twanging instruments demands his attention, the beat of a tambourine—pandeiro—replaces his heartbeat.

“Iê!” A woman shouts, demands the attention of his fear. “Eu ja vivo enjoado, de viver aqui na terra..."

The words ghost his lips, his eyes slip closed under the spell of the woman’s song, a story of poetic death and morality. Every word tugs at his heart, the nostalgic voice gives them strength and makes him weak. He wishes that she did not speak of leaving—“Amanha eu vou pra lua, falei com minha mulher”—but knows he could not stop her. Nothing could.

 Nothing did.

 She left for the moon, and left her community behind to take up the fight. But it was okay, because she gave them weapons to fight with. Weapons to use on themselves, to better themselves, to better their surroundings. The music he has in his hands is proof of that.

 Satya could insult him, but she cannot insult his community. Nothing could ever change the fact that, no matter how imperfect, it’s his home. If change must come, it must come from within. Not imposed by some outside force with no understanding of their lives.

 “O senhor amigo meu, veja bem o meu cantar. Quem é dono não se ciúma, quem não é quer ciumar," the song insists in a rising crescendo, so self-assured that it must be true: those have not are jealous, and those who have, need not be jealous.

 The woman calls ("Camará!") and he responds, “Iê, viva meu Deus camará!”  

“—I see you’re doing just fine, kid.”

 The tablet nearly flips out of his hands at the gravelly voice. His spine instinctively straightens.  

“S-soldier! Hey, nice of you to drop by,” Lúcio says over the singing, trying to mute it with a clumsy hand. “How’s everyone else?”

Soldier: 76 closes the door behind him.

 “The Shimadas are being taken care of. Genji needed some repairs to his legs; Hanzo is unconscious—Ana’s Nano-Boost almost killed him; and McCree-” Lúcio could almost swear Solider muttered, ‘Damned punk’ under his breath. “-is mostly fine. Injuries were light because of you. Good work out there.”

“Me? Nah, just…doing what I gotta do, is all.”

 "You give yourself too little credit. Not everyone would run back their team after securing the payload."

 "...thanks."

 The volume buttons barely respond, the woman continues onto a different song, unperturbed by her new audience. Soldier: 76 nods at the tablet in his hands.

 “She sings well.”

 Lúcio flushes. “Uh, yeah. She’s great."

 His fumbling fingers finally manages to cut the music off.

"Someone you knew?"

 "How did you--?"

 Soldier shrugged. "Ana." The confusion must've shown on his face. "She used to sing to her daughter."

 It doesn't answer the question, not completely, but Lúcio thinks he understands and he furrows his brow at the silent tablet. Is that what it sounds like to someone who does not know the words? A song from mother to child? Is that the type of message the music conveys? The words and their meaning are obvious to him, having heard it hundreds of times, have been taught about the origins of the song (a man dying and worries little of his wife’s faithfulness because she loves him). But to someone else who knows nothing of ladainhas and the woman behind the voice, is that the image she conjures?

“You need to talk about it?”

 "Talk?" There isn't anything to talk about. With the workaholic vigilante? Nothing except the mission, but...

 "The song, the woman singing."

 "She's not that--" Interesting? Important? Lúcio falters, and can't give voice to those lies. He takes a shuddering breath, and his vision flickers upward at something unseen. He bites his lower lip. It’s not a story worth listening to, but Soldier tosses the peanut butter jar into the trash can with a dissatisfied grunt, and claims the chair for himself. It seems like he intends to stay regardless if he speaks or not.

 “It’s kind of a long story.”

“I have time.” Solder: 76 emphasizes this and stretches his legs in front of him, settling deep into the chair.

Lúcio laughs weakly at the unexpected development, and fiddles with his tablet for a moment. He scoots up his bed, and leans back against the wall. This is an old story that he has never mentioned to the press or to anyone outside his community—they already know. They were there.

“Where do I even start?”

The room falls quiet. Lúcio closes his eyes.

"...she was my mestranda."